The subject of the service is the monitoring and accompanying research of the funding measure "Excellence Start-up Center.NRW" of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the (expected) period from September 1, 2020 to December 31, 2024. There is a one-sided possibility for the client, the contract to extend up to 2 years.
On behalf of the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MWIDE), the client or specifically the project sponsor Jülich is implementing the funding measure "Excellence Start-up Center.NRW" on September 18, 2018. around.
In the course of a competition, a jury of experts selected 6 universities in the country, which will be funded by the country for 5 years from July and September 2019 with considerable funds. The focus of the funding is on concepts for the establishment of excellent start-up and start-up centers at the respective universities, the development of existing potential for spin-offs and the inclusion and strengthening of the regional start-up ecosystem. The focus is on the sustainable anchoring of entrepreneurship and start-up support in teaching, research, transfer and administration of the universities. A total of EUR 150 million is planned here, which will be available for the Excellence Start-up Center and additional activities. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) wants to increase the number of start-ups from universities by 50% by the end of 2024. Therefore, the focus is not on the 6 selected universities alone, but on the entire start-up ecosystem of the country.
In accordance with the high level of resources and the broad objectives of the funding activities, comprehensive project-related monitoring for the MWIDE and the PtJ should provide a reliable external information basis and thus improve project controlling and provide part of the necessary performance control.
The subject of the call is not a parallel nationwide survey of all universities in the country, the quantitative results z. B. provides information about the number of spin-offs or start-ups from the universities for a university-level comparison and their evaluations should be included in the monitoring.
Workshops for the sponsored 6 universities and other universities in the country will take place once or twice a year. These workshops are used for the technical exchange and the presentation of the achieved project success and are therefore an important forum for the overall project. After completion of the overall project, an external evaluation is also planned, which is also not the subject of this call for tenders, but should possibly build on the findings of the monitoring described here.